Radio Programs

Set in Hollywood in 1969, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star as a TV actor and his stunt double. The movie's low-key hangout vibes may test your patience, but every moment pulses with feeling.

In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth" before the end of the decade, the mission seemed all but impossible.

Laila Lalami's new novel is called The Other Americansand it's likely to jump start some timely book group discussions about the American experiment; specifically, about how different types of people feel less visible in this country because of their ethnicity, class, race or citizenship status.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Over the past 40 years, Sir David Attenborough has become internationally known and respected for his groundbreaking documentary shows about the natural world. His new eight-part series "Our Planet" is currently streaming on Netflix.

Melissa McCarthy is not interested in playing pleasant characters — flawless women with perfect clothes and relationships. "Who wants to watch that?" she asks. "There's nothing to sink your teeth into. .

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to talk about a part of the criminal justice system that my guest describes as trapping the innocent and making America more unequal - the massive misdemeanor system.

Berman was 60 when she moved to New York with just one suitcase to start a new life. Berman's daughter, Maira Kalman, and grandson, Alex Kalman, tell her story in a new book and museum show.

It was a cold December night in 1972 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A 38-year old widowed mother of 10 named Jean McConville was with her children in their apartment in the Divis Flats, a labyrinthine public housing project that one critic described a "slum in the sky.

Last year ran me ragged. Every comedian feels bad, all the time. That's why we do comedy. But this felt different. Nothing could get me out of bed. It was two months before a shooting at two mosques in New Zealand that would claim the lives of 51 people, and there I was, checking boxes about my thyroid in a surgeon's waiting room:

"Do you sometimes acutely believe that people hate you?" Yes.

Billionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes has long been regarded as one of Hollywood's most eccentric and prolific playboys. A few years back, writer and film critic Karina Longworth stumbled onto an online message board, listing women Hughes had had sexual relationships with – just a list of names, no other information.

Time was when the word "socialism" had a firm footing in the American political lexicon, with as many meanings as it has collected in all the other nations where it has taken root — as mixed or pure, as planned or market, as democratic or authoritarian, as a dogma or simply an aspiration — "the name of our desire," as the critic Irving Howe (and Lewis Coser) famously defined it.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Breakthroughs in heart medicine, including surgical procedures, devices and medications, have changed how various forms of heart disease are treated and enabled many people to live longer lives.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The Emmy-nominated series "Succession" tells the story of a family whose members struggle for control of the media empire founded by its patriarch.

After 12 seasons on Law & Order: SVU, Christopher Meloni plays a disgraced policeman-turned-hit man (who collaborates with an imaginary unicorn) in the second season of the Syfi Channel series Happy!.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to talk about one of the great mysteries of the human body - how the immune system works.

Many years ago, I worked as an academic day laborer on Philadelphia's Main Line. For those unfamiliar with it, the Main Line — developed in the late 19th century along a railroad route west of the city — was, for decades, a quietly grand stretch of lavish estates, private schools, and cricket and golf clubs catering to Philadelphia's old money.

Here's a sentence of critical praise I never expected to utter: The descriptions of basketball games in this novel are riveting.

The novel that's elicited this aberrant compliment is The Falconer, by Dana Czapnik.

Sigrid Nunez's National Book Award-winning novel is narrated by a woman grieving the suicide of her longtime friend and former writing professor, whom she slept with once.

Journalist Anna Fifield visited North Korea and interviewed many of its citizens — including members of Kim Jong Un's family — for her new book about the country and its leader.

The rollout plan for the new TV series The Romanoffs is unusual for Amazon — just as the drama series itself is an unusual experiment for the show's creator, Matt Weiner.

Instead of making the entire season of The Romanoffs available at once, as it does with so many of its exclusive TV series, Amazon Prime Video presents only the first two episodes on the night the series premieres.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. At the recent Sundance Film Festival, the top prize in the world cinema dramatic competition went to "The Souvenir," written and directed by Joanna Hogg.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Geena Davis starred in two movies about female empowerment - "Thelma & Louise" and "A League Of Their Own.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. You probably know my guest, the New York Times deputy general counsel David McCraw, from a letter he wrote that went viral.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In his earlier films "Barbara" and "Phoenix," the acclaimed German director Christian Petzold explored different chapters of his country's tumultuous 20th century history, from the Holocaust to the Cold War.

Most New Yorkers walk by sewer grates or subway entrances and think nothing of it, but not journalist Will Hunt. Hunt is fascinated with the world below us.

"There's just so much beneath the streets of New York City that people walking around on the surface don't ever think about," Hunt says.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Sunday night sees the end of the seventh and final season of "Veep," the acclaimed HBO political satirical series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a politician.

The original Veronica Marspremiered on television 15 years ago, which, in TV terms, was a whole different era. David Milch's HBO series Deadwood, which just reunited its cast for a fabulous TV movie, premiered that year.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the quintessential behind-the-scenes political power player. "He really has no signature speech — there's no great Dick Cheney moment where he was in front of a pulpit delivering a great line," says filmmaker Adam McKay.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

Before we begin, I want to add our voices to the many who have expressed their horror, outrage, sadness and grief over this weekend's two massacres.

Esi Edugyan's new novel, Washington Black, opens on wretched terrain: The year is 1830; the location is a sugar plantation in Barbados. Our narrator, an enslaved 11-year-old boy named George Washington Black — "Wash" for short — tells us that the old master has recently died.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Damon Young is best known as the editor and co-founder of the blog Very Smart Brothas, where he's built a faithful readership thanks to his social commentary on race and culture.

There is a moment in Bohemian Rhapsody, the new biopic on the late Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, when Rami Malek, playing Mercury, steps onto the stage in a sequin leotard that leaves little to the imagination.

Why are emergency room costs so unpredictable?  A talk with Sarah Kliff, a health policy journalist for Vox, who collected ER bills from around the country, and then got the stories behind the bills.